Stephen King, Cujo

Stephen King is utterly brilliant. His use of foreshadowing in the beginning is amazingly creative and I hope that he himself reads this. I did two reports on "Cujo" and each time I couldn't make myself believe that this was not a fantastic book. I don't know where his inspiration comes from but he is just a fantastic writer. If I could meet him I would honour him and show him the respect that he deserves. A very moving book that gave me the chills and a scare and I don't scare that easily. Being that I am only 15 I loved this book and wouldn't change a thing. It was fantastic!

Stephen King, Cujo - Synopsis:

"Cujo is a two-hundred-pound Saint Bernard, the beloved family pet of the Joe Cambers of Castle Rock, Maine, and the best friend ten-year-old Brett Camber has ever had. One day Cujo pursues a rabbit into a bolt-hole, a cave inhabited by some very sick bats.

Vic Trenton, New York adman obsessed by the struggle to hang on to his one big account, his restive and not entirely faithful wife, Donna, and their four-year-old son, Tad, moved to Castle Rock seeking the peace of rural Maine. But life in this small town--evoked as vividly as a Winesburg or a Spoon River--is not what it seems. As Tad tries bravely to fend off the terror that comes to him at night from his bedroom closet, and as Vic and Donna face their own nightmare of a marriage suddenly on the rocks, there is no way they can know that a monster, infinitely sinister, waits in the daylight, and that the fateful currents of their lives will eddy closer and faster to the horrifying vortex that is Cujo".

Written back in 1981, 'Cujo' is one of King's least supernatural novels. King spends a long time building on the characters involved within the book, allowing the reader to slowly build up a relationship with them. Then the full terror of Cujo explodes in your face, dragging you through the utter desperation and fear that the characters are put through. The tension is superb, with such vivid descriptions, the atmosphere is intense.

Cujo is one of those novels where the author needs to spend time building on the characters before the horror really hits them, so as to create that relationship between them and the reader. This does unfortunately make the novel a little slow-paced to begin with. It's well worth persisting with, because soon enough the storyline will start racing by with the horror of the situation.

The novel runs for a respectful 345 pages in total, and is available on Time Warner Paperbacks.